Worcesteria: The home team steps up

Bill Shaner Reporter @bill_shaner

Tuesday

Apr 21, 2020 at 2:22 PMApr 21, 2020 at 2:22 PM

TEST EVERYONE: Kudos to Mayor Joe Petty for at least trying to put in motion a plan to test all city residents for COVID-19 (I think we can just go with the virus on first reference now, huh). The mayor instructed the city manager recently to work with local healthcare providers to put together a plan to test everyone in the city over the course of a couple of months. Whether that’s at all feasible remains to be seen. But we know that countries that did this as a rule — South Korea and Germany especially — are looking at a much cleaner reopen and really mitigated a lot of the damage. There was a big turd on the ground, and they dodged it by mass testing. The U.S. on the other hand just sort of stepped in it then tried to mask the smell. Petty is quoted by Spectrum News as saying, “I think people want to be comfortable enough that they know they’re not spreading it” when it comes time to start reopening the economy. This makes perfect sense and in a sane universe it would be national policy. Even if all the other barriers present in our country’s botched response to this pandemic prevent Petty’s goal from being realized, it’s good he put it out there. If anything, it will allow us to later see what got in the way of it happening.

CLERKS II: Stephen “AJ” Pottle has been selected as the city’s deputy clerk pending any unforeseen drama at City Council this week (yes I am writing this on Monday afternoon per my new deadline; been a while since I reminded you of that hasn’t it?). Pottle’s appointment completes a tidy and well-organized changing of the guard from Sue Ledoux to Niko Vangjeli, who held the deputy clerk role before Pottle. The City Clerk is going to have a really interesting job come November. We’ll likely still be working with some sort of distancing restrictions at polling locations. And as we saw with all the used car dealership owners around the country who came out to protest the lockdown over the weekend, distancing restrictions are almost surely going to become a political football in the general election. Both Niko and Stephen have proven themselves to be technologically savvy and responsive in my experiences with them, and I think they’ll handle the job just fine. And, before you ask, no, I am not gassing them up so they process my records requests faster. I would … I wouldn’t do that. Nope, not this guy.

GO OFF KING: City Councilor Khrystian King filed an order for this week’s City Council meeting requesting the city manager share race and ethnicity statistics as it relates to the virus to help advance health equity in the city. Racial equity is something that needs to be constantly part of the analysis here as we deal with the pandemic and we figure out how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s been well published that this pandemic has already disproportionately impacted African American and Latino populations around the country and it’s likely to continue doing so. We deserve to know how it shakes out in Worcester. And, as always, we need to be conscious that disparities in healthcare aren’t just racial but class-based. You’re more likely to get this virus if you’re brown or poor, as evidenced by the extremely high 43 percent rate of positive tests among the city’s homeless. Good data on this stuff is important, not only for health experts to understand the virus, but for the general public to understand how this virus has exposed the inherent injustices and cruelties of our healthcare system. Good for Khrystian King for getting that conversation going. Also, I would like to point out that this is probably the first Worcesteria in my time of writing these where I said nothing but generally positive things about Worcester city officials. It wasn’t intentional but now I’m going to declare it this week’s theme. Go team!